more from class

[shrswmn]

I'm taking a plein air class from the Jerusalem Studio School this summer. Our teacher, Amir Rubin, is encouraging us to simplify and concentrate on tone and temperature, and creating a harmonious palette. C&C appreciated

[css]

These are nice masses - I especially like the last one. It's a good exercise to just concentrate on the masses as it will help your painting alot down the road - I spent a good summer just trying to work on massing in.

[shrswmn]

thanks Chris. that's what our instructor said, that this will give us a base on which to continue. I don't feel that anything we're doing there is a finished work--they're sketches, exercises. Like your quote says....

[bigflea]

Barbara
I think what is more helpful to beginning painters is learning to begin separating, dividing or making a clear distinction between a mass in direct sunlight and adjacent masses in shade.
With that as a starting or foundation point, the student can begin to compare color in shade to every area of shade, and every color mass in sunlight to every area in sunlight.
When thinking of tone and temperature of color it is really more than tone. It is hue family and hue dominance, saturation, and chromatic value that make up what is conceived as tone and temperature.
It is easier to make the comparisons of one hue to another different hue, for example, a yellow compared to a blue or a red, as a starting point for relating colors.
When a form is conceived as a single hue with dark or light, cool or warm variations of the single hue, the result generalizes the color for both the area in direct sunlight and in shade.
In daylight most forms have a transitional color area between the sunlit and shaded areas that is different than either the mass of sunlight or mass of shade.
Forms become 3 D when the painter can show the differences between the sunlight, shade and the transitional area between them.

In terms of the idea shown here in your examples, Inness is a painter who used tone and temperature as a foundation for his compositions. In terms of hue he did generalize differences within a sunlit or shade area, but was careful to separate sunlit from shade masses. His works limited saturation and chroma (brightness). He seems a good one to study just for getting the richness of tone and temperature that is possible.

Ken